While Lust Stories and Veere Di Wedding have taken Hindi cinema by its horns for getting super late in giving us a sensitive portrayal of sex toys, our society still believes that sex toys are for singles, elderly women getting no sex, only for BDSM etc.

As I read this book, I was shaken; recognising myself in characters/people I didn’t particularly like and realising things about my own securely held beliefs is not a comfortable feeling (albeit a necessary one). It encouraged me, gently but firmly, to step out outside my worldview to digest what it means to serve your country.

If I wasn’t feeling like shit because I was turned on by girls (one girl in particular), I’m sure I would have found something else to hate myself for. I was young, female, loud, and had a body. Society does this to you. It moulds you till you are all soft woundable spots, and then it makes you kick yourself.

It’s a chilly, Friday evening when Maulana – with his wide, expressive eyes and ochre, paan-stained teeth – announces that Islam considers the marriage of a man and a woman to be a contract. You giggle and blush, unaccustomed to conversations about the M-word.

A democratic establishment and the tireless rallying by activists and legislators have improved the overall climate in India over the years, with the Supreme Court finally striking down the colonial vestige of Section 377 and the Parliament tabling bills for trans rights (of course, in spite of flaws and all).

At first glance, it may seem like firms concerned with their objectives of productivity and profitability seldom care about the life and preferences of their employees. However, in our naïveté we overlook the moral foundations that can make a toxic workplace different from a healthy, accepting one.

My family, for one, cherishes a ritual that I like to refer to as the "chai peelo, sab theek ho jaayega". The chai peelo, sab theek ho jaayega or CPSTHJ is a delicate ritual that must be performed every time an uncomfortable truth is brought up.

In this paradise for Queers, the miniscule minority were the much-despised cis-heterosexual lot, who stubbornly believed the world was ideally just for Adam and Eve and proselytized a binary gender system enforced by ‘he’ and ‘she’ pronouns and suffocating monogamy.

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Gaysi is a space where the Desi-Gay community comes together and shares personal stories, their triumphs and failures, their struggles and their dreams, their hopes and despair. And in doing so, gives other gaysis a sliver of hope too. More